1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to storage devices for video content, such as, personal video recorders, and more particularly, to deletion of stored video content on the PVR if a particular video content has been partially viewed and not been tagged not to be deleted.
2. Prior Art
Personal video recorders (PVR's) have become very popular in recent years for recording video content, such as television broadcasts, for later viewing by a viewer. Examples of PVRs are those manufactured by TiVo and Panasonic (“Replay TV”). Although such PVRs have large storage devices, typically a hard drive, the number of television broadcasts or other video content that can be stored is not limitless. Therefore, either the viewer must manually delete stored video data on the storage device or the PVR must have an automatic scheme to do so. Typically, the PVR automatically deletes video data when a need arises according to the FIFO (First In First Out) deletion scheme. That is, the video content that has been stored for the longest time is the first to be deleted if there is not enough storage space to store new video content.
Although a viewer can indicate that a particular video content not be deleted (e.g., locked), the FIFO deletion scheme is arbitrary and does not necessarily reflect a viewers preference for deleting video content from the plurality of video data stored on the storage device that he/she no longer has interest in viewing or never had interest in viewing.